108 THE CURRENT CINEMA T HE West German comedy "Men. . ." ("Månner. . .") is lightweight and good-natured, and it moves along faster than most of the recent German imports but to no particular effect. What stirs interest in it is that it's about two men-dark, immaculately groomed Julius (Heiner Lauterbach ), a prosperous and self- satisfied advertising executive in his late thirties, and blond, long-haired Stefan (Uwe Ochsenknecht), a bohe- mian, roughly the same age, who scowls with his lips, like Daryl Hannah-and it was written and di- rected by a thirty-one-year-old wom- an, Doris Dörrie. (This is her third feature.) The people lining up to see it are probably hoping for anew, dif- ferent view of men. And what we get is different, but in a skewed way. The two men don't take hold-it's as if some essential element of masculin- ity eluded the director . Yet it's not just that: her women aren't all there, ei- ther. Dörrie's characters have no sub- stance; they're not quite human, and the picture is harmless and insipid, in the mode of French farces such as "Cousin, Cousine." When Julius, in his costly home in the suburbs of Munich, discovers that # f1 11 1 )) 1 9 7 3 8 4 7c;S spying on Paula, sees Stefan drop her off and drive away, the only vehicle on hand to follow him with is a child's red bicycle; he doubles over on it and pedals like mad. The gag has a con- siderable lineage, going back to Jacques T ati, and back, back to Mack Sennett. When J ulíus is living in Ste- fan's apartment and Paula comes to lunch, he puts on a King Kong mask and boxing gloves. This isn't an hom- age to David Warner in his gorilla suit twenty years ago in "Morgan!," any more than it's an homage to Mi- scha Auer's simian stunt fifty years ago in "My Man Godfrey." It's just a gag, but at least this one has a payoff: Julius can see that Paula is intrigued -and a little aroused-by this un- known fellow's frisking about as King Kong. Most of these derivative "care- free" moments, such as a scene of Stefan and Julius taking turns playing with a toy car, don't come to much. They're tossed together with a jocular feminist exposé of men's attitudes to- ward women, and when Julius and Stefan become buddies there are am- biguous, sometimes sexually tinged romps. In one weirdly extended scene, Julius talks to Stefan while concealing a knife that's piercing his thigh, and the audience is invited to laugh at his pain. During all this, Julius, who has figured out that Paula is drawn to Stefan's lack of discipline, his frayed clothes that look slept in, and his general messiness, takes some kind of revenge by turning Stefan into an orderly bourgeois with a regular job. Conveniently, Paula is just a sparkling creature whizzing by, so we don't ask what her mo- tivation is. She might be trying out Stefan like a new flavor of ice cream. In interviews, Ðörrie has said that Julius and Stefan are meant to repre- sent the divided sides of one personality. That may have been in her mind, but it's not what emerges on- screen. Dörrie's ideas are flotsam and jetsam; they bob up and then disappear. Does the trim, proper J uli us find something to envy in Stefan-some free- dom or originality! Does Julius become looser and more liberal because of his contact with Stefan? From what we're shown, the Ersatz Paula (Ulrike Kriener), his wife of twelve years and the mother of his two children, has been having an affair with the slobby Stefan, it's a walloping blow to his ego. (He has been having dalliances with secretaries at the office, but he regards that as a male preroga- tive.) Julius can't think about any- thing but his wife's infidelity. He spies on her and her lover: he wants to know what Stefan's attraction is. So when he sees Stefan, who lives in the hippie and punkers' communal-living section of the city, posting notices of a room to rent in his apartment, he as- sumes a false name, and moves in with Stefan. This is the kind of plot that was serviceable for musical-comedy films circa 1932 and is still serviceable, but Dörrie uses it without any underpin- nings. In 1932, it would have been clear that no matter how fatuous Julius was he loved his wife, and that more than his vanity was at stake; here, there's nothing at stake-it's just a game. Is Dörrie saying that men compete just to compete-that the ob- ject itself (the wife) is of little intrinsic interest? You can't tell; all you can be sure of is that Dörrie has a penchant for whimsical cuteness. When Julius, '" .. q 35. OH. GOOD. "^''< L\ ç:E- lS R16H\ O SO-\EDULG-. n t If J I"" ,. ,- - (w .......